Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

"my Holy Book is the only religious authority"

Sounds like idolatry to me -- sounds like you are taking a book, written, edited, and organized by human beings, and equating it with God.

I'm into magick.

So a lot of what I do is observe my thoughts and intentions and direct my attention/emotion/passion/sexual energy towards the most beautiful and joyful subset of those.

When I'm particularly certain of a desired outcome I will "cast" for it, occasionally doing a bit of sorcery: drawing funny pictures and generally doing wizardly stuff.

I also do "continuous divination" AKA leaning heavily into apophenia and just generally not assuming that mysterious forces aren't at work around me. Sometimes I'll also do "acute divination" -- my favorite method is fortune cookies, not even kidding.

Visualizing and praying to various god/esse/s is important. In particular I pray to Ganesh to help me let go of negative things I'm holding onto (this was a beautiful outcome of therapy mingling with my spiritual life); I also love Inanna, and Sun meditations. I'd also be lying if I denied that Christ shows up in my most anxious moments--especially since He appeared in a dream to tell me "you don't need to be a Christian to talk to me".

Finally, there are also public rituals that I attend on a regular (sans covid) basis where we meditate on natural/spiritual forces and socialize our spirituality.

This is one of the most important bits of it all, as it 1) is a huge source of magical energy, 2) reinforces the practices I'm doing 3) inspires/goads me into deepening those practices, and 4) exposes me to more ideas and possibilities in this zone, even if I've been negligent to study the mysteries (and I have been negligent, since focusing on my career the last few years).

Zen buddhism. I started going to a local zendo about 7-8 years ago to do a weekly 1h30 hour meditation (in fact, 3 short bursts of 25min). This also became a (much shorter) daily habit, and over the year I attend various retreats (from 1 to 5 days). The zendo itself is 'managed' by a monastic.

I started because I wanted to have a crazy experience that would modify my epistemiological understanding of the world. Over the years, I discovered how past emotional events subcounsciously influenced my decision making, how much parental roles shaped my romantic views and how much of my personality was invested in my mind and not my body. I could go on and on.

I cannot prove this scientifically, but somehow I think that my effort toward zen practice made all of this possible, and the only thing I know is that the next change will be weirder than the last one.

I would also like to mention that, even if meditation is ''not christian'', I now feel that my understanding of it is better now than 8 years ago.

This is really important. GP's experience is beautiful. Yet, I recently read an article[] describing how there's very little help available to people who perhaps meditate too much and end up in spiritual crisis; meditation is sold as this panacea in our western world.

> hackingthelema

Love the user name. Would also love if you read my top-level comment on this thread.

[] https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-power...

Religions usually usurp the role of being the source of morality. It's a necessity for them because that's the only way they can cover up their deep and vast immorality.

You can't be evil if people believe you define what evil means.

This way omicient, omnipotent God can still be most moral being in existence while allowing babies to die of cancer.